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"The difference between the old Covenant and the new Reconciled becomes abundantly clear (which is a phrase that cannot be said without doing your best Halo 2 Truth impression) when you cross a creek running through the forest and start to notice the details of their actual encampment.

The former glory the Covenant held in the great war is gone, replaced by a mere fraction of its old power. Their armor is battered and broken, their vehicles scratched, rugged, and patched, the standard Covie crates are dented and losing color, and power conduits lay free, sparking from garbled radio terminals. Even the cruiser itself looks heavily repaired from this far down..."

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This is a sketch from the latest Shield and Sword update that has been posted, imagining through art and text what the fifth level of an imaginary Halo 4 might be like. See and read a bunch more about it here:

I like this. stays true to the characters, unlike how 343 changed the awsome elite armor to look weird and their skin to look like raptor chickens :/ even the jackals look scarier and more badass than elites now

I'm glad you like my designs. I've been avoiding Halo 4 content because honestly, I'll likely feel the same way as you, but I'd like to try and keep an open mind and judge all of their decisions within the context of the full game.

In my mind, pretty much all of the Sangheili pledge allegiance to their own species, like humans. The Elites you see in Shield and Sword have allied with Master Chief and Cortana and are working with you to fight the Reconciled. Follow the link in the description and you'll read about Rtas storming a Covenant Cruiser and confronting a Prophet and his lies.

My guess is that those Elites are members of the Servents of Abiding Truth, a faction of Sangheili that follow pre-covenant religious doctrine. They see the Arbiter and his followers as heretics for a number of reasons, most notably their alliance with humanity.

Either that or they're just Elites that stuck with the Covenant despite the events of the Great Schism and the truth behind the purpose of the Halo rings.

"We do not allow blasphemers to live. The gods demand a return to piety. Truth abides." One of the messages left by a member in the book Halo: Glasslands